Friday, August 21, 2009

Okaaaayyyy. So I just read He's Just Not That Into You 2, I mean Valentine's Day. Let me start off by saying I'm not a fan of romance films. It's a freakin' chick flick, and I'm a dude, so it's going to take a lot to impress me. That's already one thing working against it. The second thing working against it is surprisingly the cast. Not often do you have big ensembles that pay off. Look at my Date Night review to back up this point. So was this any different?

Ok well, let's jump into the plot. Oh wait, we can't because there seriously isn't one. We are simply following the soap opera inspired lives of a countless amount of characters. Let me do my best at describing it all. Our main focus is Reed (to be played by Ashton Kutcher) who runs a flower shop/cafe with his friend Alphonso (played by George Lopez) and he's just proposed to his girlfriend Morley (to be played by Jessica Alba). Reed is also kinda in love with his other friend Julia (Jennifer Garner) but Julia has a thing for Harrison (Patrick Dempsey) who just so happens to be married. There's also Sean (Eric Dane), a closeted football player who has a lovesick publicist (Jessica Biel) and a boyfriend (Bradley Cooper) who is flying home with military mom Kate (Julia Roberts) who wants to get home to see her son. Her son is staying with his grandparents (Hector Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine) and has a babysitter named Janice (Emma Roberts) who wants to lose her virginity to her boyfriend (Carter Jenkins) on Valentine's Day. There's also Liz and Jason (Anne Hathaway and Topher Grace) who's first date goes awry and Kelvin (Jamie Foxx), a news reporter who goes around interviewing people on Valentine's Day. Confused? Yeah, so was I.

Ok, so you've got all these characters, are their storylines interesting? Honestly.... not really. It's all SO cliche. Not to mention the dialogue is clunky and some of the characters are VERY unrealistic. For instance, Janice, who is in high school mind you, tells everybody who will listen her plans on losing her virginity. And Kate's son, who is ten, knows everything there is to know about love, and is smarter than everybody else in this film. Let's do a quick count real quick of everything it's got going against it: to many characters, no real plot, clunky dialogue, unrealistic characters, and an exact rip-off of the already mediocre He's Just Not That Into You. Seriously, even down to the fact that Jamie Foxx's character's sole purpose is to serve as segues into the next storyline, just like the little interviews in HJNTIY.

So yeah, it's got a lot of problems, and I assume it's going through rewrites, as Taylor Lautner, Taylor Swift, and Joe Jonas are rumored to be in the cast as well. That just makes things even more cluttered. For some reason though, I'm not giving it a terrible rating. I actually read the entire 118 page script in one sitting. I was kinda surprised. I was slightly entertained. Not enough to look past all it's flaws. But enough to not totally hate it.

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comments:

I read the script & while I thought it was kinda cliched and cringed at some of the dialogue, I actually read the script in one sitting and although some of the characters were ridiculous, I kinda enjoyed it.I hate the casting though. Just doesn't work for me, especially Jessica Biel, Jessica Alba & Anne Hathaway.